On Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:53:38 -0800 (PST), Mizter T
wrote:


On 13 Dec, 20:40, "Paul Scott" wrote:

"Jonathan Stott" wrote:

For the first time in a while I made the journey from Bournemouth to
Brockenhurst in the daylight.

I noticed what appear to be some sort of gadgets stuck on top of a short
post that look suspiciously like touchpads for smartcards. I saw them next
to the entrances at New Milton, Hinton Admiral and Christchurch stations.

Is this the start of South West Trains' introduction of smartcards across
their franchise?

Yes - and once you start looking for them, the support pillars or wall
brackets and associated wiring conduit are visible in a lot of stations, I
even saw a couple of the readers on the Netley line this week; and you may
have noticed the new barriers at Southampton have integral 'Oyster like'
yellow pads. Fitters are also going around modifying the S&B TVMs that
aren't already fitted for smartcard readers (the rectangular knock out plate
to the right of the screen).


It's on then! Funny, I was thinking about whether SWT would sensibly
follow TfL's usage of a yellow 'touch-here' symbol for the smartcard
pads on ticket gates.

There is a photo on the London Reconnections website of a reader.

http://londonreconnections.blogspot....-go-smart.html

I haven't been following this that carefully lately - SWT's system
(and presumably all of those yet to come) will be to the ITSO
standard. Ticket gates in the London zones will of course also have to
accept Oyster (aka Philip's proprietary MiFare smartcards). IIRC the
DfT had agreed to fund work done by TfL to their Oyster readers on
ticket gates, on standalone validators (such as on the DLR) and on
buses to modify them so as to be able to read ITSO smartcards too - is
this still on? If it is that still leaves questions open as to the
extent of such modifications, i.e. whether they would just be capable
of checking for a valid season ticket/Travelcard or alternatively be
capable of more advanced functions such as ITSO pay-as-you-go journeys
etc.

You need to read the latest Modern Railways where uncle Roger has
updated on all of this. First off there is no such thing as an ITSO
Smartcard but ITSO does not provide Smartcards it provides a basis for
compatible ticket products to be loaded on to "media" (i.e. Smartcards)
that ITSO approves. There are technical terms such as "shells" which
are loaded on to the "media" and within the "shells" are "ITSO Product
Identities (IPEs)" - and I though LU was bad when it came to crazy
terminology and TLAs. There are IPEs for single and return tickets,
season tickets and tickets with reservations. Note no mention of a PAYG
style product.

ITSO have withdrawn support for the MiFare cards used by TfL for Oyster
so there's a bit of an interesting issue there. Also Transport Scotland
have reacted rather badly to ITSO's action so there's another little
problem area brewing.

Roger goes on to point out that the ITSO related commitments in
franchises are all rather vague and certainly not "integrated". There is
also an apparent lack of leadership or desire to lead within the rail
industry to actual get to full inter availability and integration of
ITSO across all TOCs.

Work to get Oyster PAYG rolled out to TOCs within the zones is targetted
for a September 2009 launch. However it is not clear which TOCs are
formally signed up as no statement has been made. There are all sorts
of interesting factors in the SWT Franchise agreement that gets SWT off
its commitments on smartcards if other parties don't do their bit - more
info at London Reconnections. As you might imagine this won't make for
easy negotiations with TfL. My guess is that the cost of all of this
has ballooned enormously from the first figure quoted over 2 years ago
because the political imperative is so great.

I would hope it's the latter for several reasons, one of which being
that it'd would assist TfL if they decided to move the Oyster system
over from MiFare to ITSO smartcards (MiFare being partially
compromised, though it hasn't seemingly been holed below the
waterline, plus of course there's the issue that MiFare is single-
supplier.) I haven't read anything in particular to support this idea
but I have my suspicions that TfL might be tempted to make this switch
to ITSO at some point - which could lead to the benefit of 'National
Rail' smartcard products being loaded on new ITSO Oyster cards. This
would of course require modification or replacement of the very great
number of Oyster readers in ticket offices, ticket machines and shops
(the so called 'Oyster Ticket Stops', which have just been issued with
new kit - the 'Pearl' reader - is this ITSO compatible/easily
modifiable I wonder?).

None of the above works because in TfL world there is a fully integrated
system with card distribution, card retailing, value adding, journey and
value validation and a back room system to support it. As there is no
such thing as an ITSO Smartcard TfL cannot swap across to it. Also
there is no uniform National Rail "back room system" to capture the
data, process it and achieve settlement. Every user of the SWT ITSO
trial has to send in a voucher for each trip so SWT can check their
prototype system to see if the validation record has reached there. Can
you imagine how much testing will be needed when we are talking about
real tickets and possibly money being caught by these devices and then
sent through possibly several systems to achieve full settlement?

I don't see why TfL would be remotely interested in ditching what it has
when it has to cope with the Olympics for something which has no real
structure to it.

Back to the imminent future - the new SWT smartcard readers on ticket
machines and in booking offices will presumably be ITSO only and hence
unable to deal with loading anything onto existing Oyster cards (or am
I wrong here?). Therefore I guess that some new symbol will have to be
devised for the smartcard readers on ticket machines, otherwise
holders of Oyster cards will end up trying to buy tickets or top-up
from machines which are incompatible. Going by the same logic I
suppose it would make some sense for the symbol to be a bit different
on non-London ticket gates in a probably doomed attempt to
differentiate them with Oyster (I can imagine people trying to use
Oyster PAYG from Guildford into London for example).

I think worrying about what symbols to use on the equipment is a bit
premature when a working system seems to be years away despite SWT's
efforts to date.

London Midland are not even considering applying any ITSO functionality
at the southern end of their franchise area because of the Oyster
integration issues. Apparently their franchise agreement doesn't
specify how smartcards would be implemented so they're taking the risk
averse option - wouldn't you in their shoes?

Of course there is no news as to what smart card functionality there will
be. If (like the current trial on the Reading line) it is for season tickets
only, there is not much point in readers at open stations...

It isn't card functionality - it is IPEs for ITSO and I suppose good old
fashioned "products" for TfL stuff.

Indeed - unless one could 'pick-up' a season ticket ordered online or
by phone by touching on the validator, or perhaps (ala Oyster) extend
a journey beyond the limits of the season ticket held. It would be
great if a straightforward pay-as-you-go functionality (again ala
Oyster) were to be implemented, but there are undeniably issues of
doing so on a network that has many ungated stations where it might be
misused/abused.

I don't see that happening for a very, very long time given the lack of
industry lead and no obvious commitment to agree how retailing and
settlement will work. I also think there may be real issues for the
industry over the holding of deposits and cash reserves related to a
PAYG product. TfL managed to deal with this for Oyster but again no
leadership means the TOCs are handicapped before they start. An
"informed source" (yes I have the odd one or two) used the word
"shambles" in relation to implementation of ITSO on National Rail.

--
Paul C